Yeah, but you get that with houses in most areas as well. Homeowners associations. pay $300 a month to have someone tell you what you can and can't have on your lawn/porch/patio/etc. at least you sometimes get free cable or lawn maintenance out of it. sometimes free paint as well, though only in "approved" colors.

"The reason an author needs to know the rules of grammar isn't so he or she never breaks them, but so the author knows how to break them."

raptornx01 wrote:Yeah, but you get that with houses in most areas as well. Homeowners associations. pay $300 a month to have someone tell you what you can and can't have on your lawn/porch/patio/etc. at least you sometimes get free cable or lawn maintenance out of it. sometimes free paint as well, though only in "approved" colors.

Dunno about that. I think that only goes if you're in a 'created' community, like a gate community. If you just own a house on the street you can do whatever you want...come to my 'hood and you'll see exactly what complete freedom to never paint your house or cut your grass, have 20 old cars rusting on your lawn, or keep your trash barrels on your front porch is all about...and then you oughta see what everyone else BESIDES us does...

raisindot wrote:Dunno about that. I think that only goes if you're in a 'created' community, like a gate community. If you just own a house on the street you can do whatever you want...come to my 'hood and you'll see exactly what complete freedom to never paint your house or cut your grass, have 20 old cars rusting on your lawn, or keep your trash barrels on your front porch is all about...and then you oughta see what everyone else BESIDES us does...

no dog on the porch and a rocking chair? we get that too in some areas, but some try to change it around.

yeah, there's no helping some people

"The reason an author needs to know the rules of grammar isn't so he or she never breaks them, but so the author knows how to break them."

Yeah, you only really get those homeowners associations with new, created communities. However, a lot of cities have ordinances to force upkeep. For example if you don't mow your grass here, if it gets over a certain length and someone complains, the city will send you a notice that if you don't mow within a certain number of days they'll come do it for you and send you a bill.

Never really understood the attraction of those created communities. They're cookie cutter homes, usually overpriced and poor construction, little to no landscaping, homeowners associations with weird rules and fees, no character to the architecture. They're like the strip malls of neighborhoods.

“It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees:

Catch-up wrote:Never really understood the attraction of those created communities. They're cookie cutter homes, usually overpriced and poor construction, little to no landscaping, homeowners associations with weird rules and fees, no character to the architecture. They're like the strip malls of neighborhoods.

I suspect they attract a certain type who would love to hang up signs saying "no riff-raff".

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” – Blaise Pascal

The idea behind the homeowners association is to help maintain property values.

If you live in a regular neighborhood with no set standards then your neighbor can totally trash their own property, or build weird structures that are right on the property line etc. and that can decrease the value of your property.

By setting and maintaining certain regulations, it helps protect the value of the property in the community.

Having said all that, in practice, they're a load of crap and no one should ever be subjected to their "standards".

Oops, sorry! Did not mean to slam anyone's home purchase. I was speaking specifically of the ones near us. I realize the idea is to keep the home values up. However there are lots of regular neighborhoods in cities that have ordinances to keep things up.

“It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees: